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By Alex Williams, MMATorch Senior Contributor
On Friday, the Kansas City Star's sports section featured a front page story about Tim Sylvia. Sylvia's knockout loss to Abe Wagner took place later that night in KC. Now, far be it from me to find fault with my hometown newspaper prominently covering MMA, but in discussing the UFC and Strikeforce's current lack of interest in "Big Tim," the Star's Sam Mellinger wrote:
"Things might be different for [Sylvia] now if he had beaten Fedor Emelianenko in his first fight after leaving the UFC. At the time, many considered Emelianenko the world’s premier fighter, and Sylvia tapped out in the first round. After that, he was forced to wade through MMA’s minor leagues. . . . If he had beaten Emelianenko, who knows what Sylvia might be doing now?"
What Mellinger doesn't mention is that Sylvia followed the loss to Emelianenko by coming in embarrassingly overweight and getting knocked out in nine seconds by former heavyweight boxing contender Ray Mercer. Mercer had lost his only previous MMA fight by submission to Kimbo Slice. 48 years of age at the time of the Sylvia match, he was no Herschel Walker. Surely Sylvia's disgraceful performance against Mercer had more to do with his dearth of big fight opportunities than his loss to Fedor, arguably the greatest fighter in the history of the sport?
In an e-mail, I posed this question to Mellinger. He replied:
"Circumstances around [the Mercer] fight seemed really strange, but it probably was worth mentioning."
Well, yeah! This was a bit like an author penning a piece about Michael Jordan never making it in Major League Baseball, but blaming Jordan's coming up short on him not being as good as a reincarnated Mickey Mantle, as opposed to him not being as good as the worst outfielder in the league.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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